


Rust and Stardust

by AKA_47



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, One Shot, there's no happy ending here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 20:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11425518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: A young Victoria had to live without love. An older Victoria finds it in Will, but in falling in love she also has to stare down all of its complications. A series of snapshots of a relationship between a modern Victoria and Will from beginning to (tragic) end.





	Rust and Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> This is about 98% angst, like my brain apparently. All of these images have been swirling in my mind for a while now, and I hope that I found a cohesive way to put them together. The vignette titles (and entire work title) are from Lolita. I hope that you enjoy.

  1. _I. “Said the starling”_



“Uncle John” had called her a bad girl. Victoria was a bad girl for trying to talk to Mama, a bad girl for being afraid of the dark, a bad girl for crying when she cut her knee. She’d never been a bad girl when Papa was around, but she came to think that maybe when he went away it made her bad. Uncle John didn’t let her go to school anymore. She would make the other kids bad too, maybe. When she was a very bad girl Uncle John would lock her in the cupboard, and though she thought Mama must have heard her screaming, she never came to let her out. Victoria knew then that she must be impossible to love, not worthy of being saved, or cuddled.

 

Still, she couldn’t quite put her finger on what made her such a monster, for try as little Victoria might, she couldn’t find any razor-sharp teeth, scales, or any of the other scary qualities she knew a monster had. So, she reasoned, the rottenness must have been inside, deep in a place where she couldn’t dig it out.

 

She asked God sometimes to take it away, but he never did, because Uncle John kept yelling, and Mama kept avoiding her, and still no other little girls were allowed to come have sleepovers. Sometimes in her dreams Victoria imagined that the badness had gone away and she was a princess locked in a tower, but more often than not she was the evil dragon who burnt the prince to a crisp.

 

No matter how the dream went, Victoria would wake up wondering what love felt like, and if it was love that would make her a good girl again.

 

\----

_II. “Ever and ever sight”_

 

Victoria came to realize that _I love you_ was a sensation rather than words. She felt it pressed into her skin as William held her curled in his lap. She felt it in his eyes as they gazed at her face, a little smile tilting his lips like he couldn’t quite believe his luck. She felt it when she pressed against her ear to his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart and knowing in that moment that she didn’t want to ever be apart from him.

 

She tried to make him feel it too, but her body was unpracticed, and she thought she must have bungled through it more than anything. Her lips were equally incapable, and she stayed silent, though the words hung on the cusp of every breath nowadays.

 

“Victoria?”

 

She blinked up at him, and he chuckled at how obviously her mind had been a million miles away. “Sorry?”

 

“I asked if now would be a good time for me to meet your parents.”

 

“Oh,” she felt her face reddening, so she hastened to escape from his hold, pretending to be suddenly invested in washing the dishes that had piled up in the kitchen sink. “You know, I don’t think that now is…the best. Mama is so busy and…”

 

She was spluttering and she knew it. The cup she’d been washing slipped into the basin, making her jump.

William watched her from the sofa, a bemused smile on his lips. “Be careful, or I’ll start to think you’re ashamed of me.”

 

Victoria scoffed. “Not of _you._ You know, I haven’t met your family.” The last part had just occurred to her, and she put her hands on her hips, proud of the defense she’d found.

 

William’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. “They’re dead. You forget I’m quite a bit older than you, Darling.”

 

“Right.” She deflated, casting around the room as though she might find some other way to put him off floating in the air.

 

William slipped from the couch, coming behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. “You’re not ready,” he said into her hair in a way that made her shiver. “That’s alright. You only have to tell me.”

 

She felt her eyes stinging. It was silly really, how these little assurances made her heart stutter. She dug her nails into her palm in an effort to stop the tears, but he caught the sound of her hitched breath and pulled her still closer.

 

“What is it?”

 

How could she explain how they meant everything? How could she tell him that _no one_ in her life had ever had confidence that she could make her own decisions?

And the simple truth of it was that she had to tell him, if not _everything,_ then something.

 

“There’s only Mama.” Victoria looked at her water wrinkled fingers, picking at puckered skin. “My father died when I was young and she remarried. Neither of them had much time for me after that.” She shrugged. It couldn’t hurt her anymore. She’d promised when she’d gone off to university that none of what either of them had ever told her was going to hold any weight for her anymore. It was a silly promise, really. She’d been their prisoner for so long she was still learning how not to be. It hurt. It all hurt.

 

“I thought you were taught at home.”

 

“Mhm.” She wanted it to be nonchalant, but it came out as a squeak.

 

He was waiting. She couldn’t breathe.

 

“Uncle John thought that my bad temperament could be better controlled at home. Or, I don’t know, he always had such influence over Mama, maybe he just liked the power of it. I just—Will—I just got away from them and I don’t want to go back. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I—they didn’t…they’re not nice Will.” She was talking to fast, her hands were flailing in the air. She was sure she must have sounded insane, or like she was hyperventilating, because that’s certainly what it felt like.

“ _Victoria_.”

 

Was it a question? A plea? It certainly sounded like pity, and she felt like her insides were burning up from the inside. She broke away from him, pacing up and down, her eyes on her toes to avoid looking at him.

 

“No, I mean, it’s fine. They—I had food, and water, and a roof over my head. I don’t think Mama meant to hate me. I think when she looked at me she thought of Papa. I look like him, you know, and that’s not…really her fault.”

 

“Victoria.” Quieter this time, barely a sound at all. _I love you_ , it said, and she couldn’t help the tears that flowed down her cheeks.

 

“And Uncle John—he never asked for children, and I got in the way, and I made an awful lot of noise, and I was afraid of the dark. I cried and he detested crying.” She wiped away at the tears, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all, except that she was not laughing at all, but sobbing, and she found that she couldn’t stop.

 

When her knees buckled, she was surprised that she didn’t feel the impact of her skin on the floor. Instead she was in Will’s arms, and he was stroking her hair, whispering words she couldn’t hear over the pounding in her ears. The wordless murmur of his voice was a wave of _you’re safe_ , over and over.

 

Eventually she calmed down enough to listen to what he was saying. “Children are supposed to be loved. It’s not just about providing, Victoria. You deserve to be loved. You deserved more. You do. You are perfect. Do you hear me? Perfect.”

 

He sounded angry, and had it been a different person, a different life, she might have flinched, but she recognized that he was angry for her, and she gripped the back of his shirt tighter, drawing him in.

 

“I love you,” she said, with a ferocity that seemed to surprise him.

 

“I love you too.” But she wasn’t surprised. He’d been saying it without any words all along.  

 

\-----

_III. “Icebergs in paradise”_

“I’m sorry,” but even to her own ears she didn’t sound it. She sounded exhausted, frustrated, maybe even mad, but not sorry. Still, she kept her hands folded on her lap, eyes cast down, the perfect image of a contrite little saint.

 

Of course, he saw right through it.

 

“Bullshit.”

 

Victoria chanced a glance up at Will. He was standing in front of her, stance wide and imposing, features rigid, tone clipped. He was angrier than she’d even seen him, but it only made her temper flare.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said again, the mockery clear in her words now, “I was under the impression that what happened to my body was my own decision. Or am I just a doll for you to play with as you want to?”

 

One step and he was towering over her. She could feel his breath on her skin. She lifted her eyes to glare at him, all pretense of apology disappearing in a flash. She would not feel small again, not when he had promised her that he would never make her.

 

“I honestly cannot believe that you don’t know what you’ve done. You’re smart, Victoria.” He almost pointed a finger at her temple, but stopped just short of touching her. “Tell me that you truly believe that aborting _our child_ without even discussing it with me was something you’re entitled to do.”

 

She stood up. Their toes were touching. She cursed her height. She could feel how ridiculous she was, still having to stare up at him. She felt like a child throwing a tantrum. She hated him for it, in that moment.

 

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. You do not get to act surprised. I _told_ you that I didn’t want children. I _told_ you how scared I was of being a mother, of fucking someone up as much as my mother did me. You thought that you could change me, that your _love,”_ she put the word in air quotes, “would convince me that I needed to settle down and have fat little babies with you like a perfect little housewife--”

 

“Fuck you,” Will spat, spinning away from her faster than the words could settle. Almost before she had blinked, he was out the door.

 

\----

_IV. “But that’s how life is”_

“I’ve been worried,” she knew her voice was hoarse, thick with the emotion she’d been on her own with for hours while she waited for him to come home. He sat perched on the edge of the bed in the darkened room. The moon was the only light to illuminate his features, but she thought that his eyes looked red.

 

“I didn’t mean to worry you.” It wasn’t an apology, but it wasn’t unkind, and she let out a relieved breath.

 

“And I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

 

“You meant some of it,” he amended, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

 

She nodded, reaching for his hand to cover with her own on top of the duvet. “Not the nastier bits.”

 

“I had a son.”

 

He cleared his throat, and as her heart plummeted at the past tense, she ran her thumb in circles across his hand.

 

“He was always very sick. And you can’t fix it. As a father, you want to be able to fix everything, but I couldn’t. I felt so powerless all the time, and then he was gone, and I couldn’t change that either. That wasn’t a conversation I was a part of, it wasn’t a conversation at all. One morning I had a son, and the next I didn’t. This morning you were pregnant, and now you’re not. And there could have been a conversation this time, but there wasn’t.”

 

Victoria wanted to redo much in her life, but never had she wished more that she could go back in time. “I didn’t know.” The words weren’t enough. She wasn’t sure that she would ever find enough of them to atone.

 

“And you should have, but it shouldn’t have mattered. I deserved to be a part of the conversation,” he could see her open her mouth to speak, but he cut off her rebuttal. “ _not_ to talk you out of it. You have reasons to be afraid of parenthood, reasons that I can’t even begin to understand, but so do I, and we owed it to ourselves to talk it out.”

 

“You must hate me,” Victoria guessed. She’d never felt so small. She wanted to disappear into the darkness and never come out.

 

“If I hated you I wouldn’t have come back,” Will promised. “You just have to talk to me, Victoria. You have to trust me.”

 

“I do.” She didn’t need to see the skeptical tilt of his brows to amend her statement, “I will. I’m learning.”

 

\----

_V. “Mais je t’aimais”_

 

“You sat there, and you told me to trust you!” She shouted, surprising herself with the decibel her voice was able to reach. “You _knew_ how hard it was for me to believe in people, and you promised over and over that you were it, you were the one I could love without being terrified.”

 

Will reached out, his movements jerky, desperate. He didn’t seem to have energy to stand, only to hold her and he pulled her to him, his head resting against her stomach.

 

“You can. Please Darling, let me explain.” His fingers tripped over the bones of her ribcage. It seemed to Victoria that he was memorizing her body, like he knew it was over before they even said the words.

 

She should have wanted to pull away, but she only wanted to be closer. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair. She wanted her lips on his skin. She wanted to crawl into his lap and feel safe again, like she had moments ago. He was home. He was the safe harbor where no judgement could penetrate. What was she going to do now? Untethered, free floating through a world she’d never really known without him.

 

“She’s your wife.”

 

“She was.” His voice was muffled from where his mouth was pressed against the fabric of his shirt, but she could hear the pain in them.

 

“She was wearing a ring. She told me you were her husband.”

 

Oh, yes, what a shock that had been, climbing the stairs to their flat, blissfully unaware, so innocently secure in the life they’d built together. And then the beautiful woman (and God, if ever there were a more pointed example of woman compared to Victoria’s wisp of a girl), swept down the stairs, all wild eyes and indignation. Yet, when she’d seen Victoria, some of the fear dissipated from her gaze. She had nothing to fear from this petite puppy of a thing. She didn’t need to say anything. It was clear as day from the air in which she laid claim to her husband. She was going to get him back. Caroline Lamb had no doubt.

 

She’d expected him to deny it, of course, but she’d found him staring dazedly ahead out of the windows, and she knew that every word of their lives together had been a lie, based on a lie.

 

William groaned, and the sound vibrated through her body. “Only in name. She ran away, had an affair. I didn’t think she was ever coming back.”

 

It was like he’d stolen all the breath from her, he was taking it with his careful path across her ribs. He was stealing it, but she didn’t want it back. “You want me to feel bad for you.” It was meant to be incredulous, had the sentence not choked her.

 

He shook his head. “I want you to understand.”

 

“You made me the other woman.”

 

“No,” he said furiously. “There was never another woman.”

 

Victoria almost laughed. “Except your wife.”

 

“She was gone.” He gripped hard at her hips and she hissed in pain.

 

“And she’s back. I know you, Will, you’ve made a commitment to her and you won’t go back on that now.”

 

“I love you,” he said by way of answer. And she knew it was over.

 

She bent forward, pressing her lips to his forehead, willing the moment to last forever. When she broke away she knew that she’d be lost.

 

“I know you do.”

 

Growing up without it, Victoria had always thought that love was the only thing in the world that mattered, that if she had it she would feel fulfilled. She knew better now. Love was beautiful, and it was complicated, and messy, and broken. It was bumbling in the dark and being terrified. It was infinite and varied and not enough. Even when she wanted it to be.

 

\----

_VI. “One small piece of light”_

He didn’t mean to watch them, willed his feet to move from the spot, his eyes to move from the broad smile on her face, the way their legs touched under the table, the way she listened, hanging on every word he said, the way Albert looked at her like he had just won the lottery. William spotted the engagement ring on her finger as she rested her chin in her hand, and his stomach churned. _I don’t want her to be unhappy,_ he reminded himself. _This is how it’s supposed to be._ What did it matter if Will thought the young man too serious, too stern, when he knew that Victoria loved nothing more than to laugh? Will didn’t factor into the equation at all anymore, and he knew that he shouldn’t. The memory of him would fade until she wouldn’t remember that they had shared a life, and if the thought of that twisted like a knife inside of him then it had no right to. William shut his eyes as Victoria leaned in to kiss her fiancé.

 

“You deserve all the happiness in the world, Darling,” he whispered, like a prayer, finally forcing himself to turn on the spot, away from the couple. He didn’t see Victoria’s eyes fall on him, didn’t see the small frown that came to her lips as she watched him leave. He couldn’t know how her heart ached a little to see him go, or how there was a part of her that wished she could run to him. It wouldn’t have mattered, really, though it might have eased some of the heaviness in his own heart, for in the next second she had turned back to Albert, her smile in place.

 

“Who was that?” He asked her.

 

“No one,” she assured him, finishing her coffee and standing up, offering Albert her hand. “Let’s go.”

\----

_VIII. I need you […] to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.”_

 

“Didn’t you know him?” Albert asked, laying the obituary on the table in front of her like it was nothing, a matter of interest rather than an event that could alter their lives in any way. “A friend of your mother’s or something?” And for a moment Victoria couldn’t answer. She could only stare, transfixed at the name at the top of the column. It sent her back.

 

 The years fell away; the room, the house she shared with Albert, the life that accompanied it. For just that moment, Victoria found herself curled on another man’s lap. He was reading, and she swatted the book away so that she could lean in to kiss him. It was a slow kiss, one for endless, lazy days. She kissed him like they had all the time in the world, whispering an _I love you_ against his mouth when they parted.

 

Had William said it back? She couldn’t hear anything but their heartbeats, but it didn’t matter. She could see it in his eyes as he cradled her face in his hands as surely as if he’d said the words 1,000 times. How lucky was she to have someone look at her like she was the greatest treasure? How lucky to feel so safe?

 

As quickly as the vision had come it disappeared, washed away as though by one of those long-ago waves. Victoria blinked that life away like a dream, her eyes refocusing on her reality. Albert had his hand at her shoulder now. Funny, she hadn’t even felt him put it there. His head was cocked to the side, scrutinizing her.

 

“Are you alright, my love?”

 

Victoria swallowed back the sick feeling rising in her throat, forcing a shaking smile onto her face. “He was my friend. Not my mother’s. Just mine.”

 

Will had been her everything for a time. It was such a short time, really, when she thought of all the life that had passed since then. He hadn’t been her everything in so many years, but there were some things he would always be; her friend, her first love, her greatest heartbreak, her best teacher. Had he known how much he stayed in her soul, even after? Known how she longed to catch a glimpse of him in the street? Known how complete he had made her? How she forgave him for everything and hoped that he forgave her?

 

It was funny, really, she hadn’t been able to tell him she loved him at the start and she could no more say it now, though she felt it just the same. She had to believe that love was a sensation, that it had found him across the years and would find him now.

 

She hoped, and then she kept living, and loving, and using the lessons Will had taught her, because it was the best thanks she could give him.


End file.
